August 27, 2026 
The second fence of my first horse show in 30 years was decorated with a giant artificial hedge and what looked like the front of an Old West saloon.
Beau stopped.
Fair enough, honestly. I looked at it and thought, What on earth is that?
I circled, re-presented the jump, and this time he went. We both made it over the fence. We just didn’t do it particularly gracefully. A split second later, I was lying in the footing staring up at the Ohio sky.
I remember thinking, Well…this is either going to ruin the weekend or become a really good story.
Thankfully, the second one proved true.
This wasn’t just my first horse show in 30 years. It was my first rated horse show ever.
Ten months earlier, I’d climbed back into the saddle after three decades away from riding. Five months earlier, I’d started leasing Beau. We’d jumped outside together for the first time that season two days before shipping to the World Equestrian Center in Wilmington, Ohio.
If there was ever a moment to question my life choices, this seemed like a reasonable one.
What’s funny is that I’d spent weeks worrying about the jumps, and the jumps turned out to be the easy part. It was everything else that caught me off guard: the nearly 100-degree heat, the wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada, the show shirt buttoned all the way to my chin reminding me why I’ve never liked high collars, and the realization that holding a light seat around an arena apparently uses muscles I don’t own.
At one point during schooling, my trainer looked over and casually asked, “Are you out of shape?”
I laughed.
Not generally.
Just…horse-show shape.
It turns out those are two very different things.
I also spent a lot of time standing at the in-gate watching other adult amateurs. As a kid, I remembered horse shows feeling like everyone else had perfect rounds while I was the only one making mistakes. Standing there 30 years later, I realized memory is funny. We remember everyone else’s highlight reel and our own blooper reel.
Because the reality was that we were all just doing our best.
There were chipped distances and long distances. Rails. Refusals. Horses swapping leads in ways that probably weren’t intentional. Beautiful rounds with one awkward moment. Awkward rounds with one beautiful moment. Everyone, no matter how polished they looked walking into the ring, had something they’d probably replay in their head on the drive home.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, a woman standing by the gate looked over at me and smiled.
“Are you having fun yet?”
I laughed because I’d become so focused on remembering my course, keeping my heels down, staying out of Beau’s way, and trying not to melt that I’d completely forgotten I was supposed to be enjoying myself.
It was exactly what I needed to hear.
Watching everyone else also made me see Beau a little differently.
I’d been telling myself for months that I wished I could bottle the horse he became at shows and bring him home. At home, he can feel a little bored. He knows every corner of the ring, every jump, every routine. At the show, though, he was alive. His ears were up. He was looking around. Not anxious. Interested.
Then it hit me.
Beau isn’t really a spooky horse.
He’s an inquisitive one.
He looks at something unfamiliar and asks, What is that?
Most of the time, all he needs from me is a confident answer.
Nothing. Let’s go.
That ridiculous hedge with the saloon attached to it?
He looked at it.
I looked at it.
And I’m pretty sure, for one brief second, we were thinking exactly the same thing.
I don’t know… what is that?
The problem wasn’t that he didn’t know.
The problem was that I didn’t either.
Watching the video later, I could see exactly what happened. I’d gotten ahead of him before he’d left the ground. Instead of giving him room to jump up to me, I blocked him. We both made it over the fence, just not in the way either of us had planned.
Oddly enough, that made me feel better.
Not because I’d fallen.
Because I understood why.
Three horses later, I was back in the ring for my next class. Somewhere in all the adrenaline, I’d never actually memorized the second course.
Sure enough, I went off course.
There was a time in my life when those two moments would have defined the entire weekend. Instead, I remember thinking, Well, at least the footing was soft.
Followed immediately by, Thank goodness I didn’t hit my head. I really don’t want to buy another $400 helmet.
That may be the biggest difference between showing at 14 and showing at 44.
About an hour after the fall, I sat on the show grounds and recorded a video about what had happened. No dramatic music. No inspirational comeback montage. Just me, still dusty, talking about my first day back at a horse show in 30 years.
As I’m writing this, that video has been viewed over 43,000 times on Instagram alone.
The views weren’t the surprising part.
The comments were.
Adult amateurs told stories about falls, refusals, forgotten courses, nerves, and horses that had humbled them in spectacular fashion. One rider admitted she’d gone off course three times in one weekend. Another said she’d cried in the parking lot before her first class back. Someone asked if I’d fallen off and pooped myself.
Thankfully, I could answer no.
Reading those comments felt a lot like standing at the in-gate.
It reminded me that social media isn’t fake. It’s just incomplete.
The beautiful photo of Beau and me sailing over a jump is absolutely real. I’ll post it because I’m proud of it. What the photo won’t show are the missed distances, the forgotten course, the heat, the nerves, the fall at the second fence, or the dozens of ordinary moments that made that one picture possible.
That’s true for almost every horse show photo we admire.
When I finally walked over to pay my rather egregious horse show bill before heading home, I found out we’d earned two third-place ribbons over fences. I’d already known about the fifth-place under saddle ribbon, so the thirds came as a complete surprise.
Thirty years ago, those ribbons would have been the story.
This time, they barely were.
What stayed with me wasn’t the placings. It was how different everything felt by Sunday afternoon.
The venue hadn’t changed. The jumps hadn’t changed. The announcer was still there. The flower boxes were still there. Even that ridiculous hedge was still there.
The only thing that had changed was that none of it felt intimidating anymore. Maybe that’s all confidence really is. Not knowing exactly what you’re doing. Not feeling fearless.
Just giving yourself enough trips around the ring until what once felt overwhelming slowly becomes familiar.
Beau probably still thought a few of those jumps looked suspicious.
The difference was that by then, when he looked at me for an answer, I finally had one.
“Nothing.”
“Let’s go.”
And after everything that could possibly go wrong did, I’d do it again tomorrow.
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